22 Weeks

I've actually started getting hot sometimes--it's more like a hot flash thing but at least I'm not freezing all the time anymore like I was in the beginning.

I ate three bags of fruit snacks the other night before bed and--poor baby--he was jumping like a Mexican jumping bean for over an hour!  I guess with me not handling sugar too well he has quite the reaction to having it.

He's moving a lot.  I'm not just feeling him when I'm at rest but now even when I'm walking around and doing stuff.  He especially after I eat and most especially I notice it when I come home and have my "naptime."  He's always pretty active then.

I'm still having queasiness every day and the mornings are the worst but I can say that the morning sickness is just about as over as I expect it to be.  It was at 5 months with Bunny that I finally felt myself and yesterday I hit the 5 month mark and I'd have to say it's the same.

My Zantac is really starting to work, though I feel it's also switching my diet around.  The acidic foods that I not only was able to eat but I craved while on Protonix (apples, grapefruit, kiwi, juice) now seem to cause me acid issues.  I've started drinking seltzer water like it's going out of style to help move the gas in my esophagus, though.  If I can burp, I'm usually okay.  It's when I can't that I get the urge to vomit.

I haven't been needing Dave to get me breakfast.  That was the case for a week a couple of weeks ago but then I went back to needing it regularly again so it's nice that I've been mostly self-sufficient this week.  I'm still eating eggs and that's still the most palatable food for me.  Currently I take my eggs with bits of ham, cheese, and chopped tomatoes.  My mouth waters just thinking of it! Hopefully I won't get sick of that any time soon because I keep having to change how I eat my eggs for that reason.  First they were scrambled, then omelets with cheese with spinach or peppers, then scrambled with ham and cheese and sometimes tomatoes, then fried, and now back to scrambled with ham and cheese and sometimes tomatoes again.

My boobs have started getting itchy.  Are they really going to grow again?  I mean, they've gotten fuller but there's no way possible they can grow larger than they did with Bunny.  I was a 36G for goodness sake! Certainly all that skin is still there to be filled out?  I'm not even fully filling my pregnancy bra from before, though I need it because I'm overflowing from my regular ones.  Also, there's been some dried colostrum present for a couple of weeks now.  With Bunny I wasn't sure what that was, but now I know it's just a reassuring sign that everything is going as it should.

My diet seems to be changing.  On the one hand, I'm unable to eat the fruit I liked to eat before, but on the other hand I'm able to eat some cheesecake which means that sugar is becoming okay and some almonds with chocolate chips.  I also found some sweet potato chips I really like and I think I can have rice crispy treats.  Now I had ALL of those--eating the way a stereotypical pregnant woman is expected to--the other day and I threw up a couple of hours later.  But since, I've been only eating some of it a little at a time to try to figure out what the offending food is and I'm thinking that it's maybe the chocolate but I can't be sure.  Wheat and most grains are still out though I'm still eating popcorn and recently I found I can eat Fritos.  I'm thinking the reason I can eat cheesecake is that it's got some protein and fat in it and I really need that.  I know that not all those calories are good ones but at this point gaining too much weight isn't really a concern and I just need some nice, fatty foods that will hold me over so I can stop eating all the time.

My varicose veins are painful and seem to be spreading on my right leg.  My left is fine.  There's only one spot where there painful and probably popped out beyond the ability to go back--that's on my ankle where I started getting those bruise-like spidery veins with my first pregnancy.  The other places where they're popping, I can tell it's not permanent at this point.  I don't know what I"m going to do about support hose come summer, though, because I don't see that even being a possibility with me being a generally hot-all-the-time person even when I'm not sick. 
 
Bunny loves her little brother SO much.  She is constantly pulling out toys from her collection to give to him and we have a large gift bag that is already almost full of his possessions.  We've also bought him a couple of things together and she just loves picking them out with me.  She's already possessive of him and can't wait until he comes.  I'm so, so glad that she loves him so much already.  

21 Weeks

 

The little guy always moves about 10 minutes after a meal.  

I've started wanting to drink more (thankfully!).  All throughout this pregnancy drinking enough has been a problem.  

He has regular hiccups--like 4-6 times a day.  It's a little excessive and sometimes I worry if he's okay because he hiccups so much.  

There's lots of movement these days.  

One of my students felt him move.  She told me from the beginning that she wanted to so when I felt some hiccups one morning I grabbed her and she felt him almost right away.  

I sleep so well.  That's been pretty much the case all pregnancy.  I mean, I have moments of insomnia, but they don't last long and when I do wake up frequently from sleep I fall right back to sleep which isn't even the case when I'm not pregnant!

I gained 3 pounds!!! Sine this is the first bit of weight I've gained at all this pregnancy, I'm pretty pumped.  I don't remember what exactly I gained with Bunny at this point but I'm thinking more like 10 or 15.  It sort of proves my boy/girl theory right.  I've always said that women gain more weight when they're carrying girls! 

20 Weeks

The biggest development this week is discovering that I'm carrying a BOY!!!  We went in for the ultrasound soon after school and the little guy had his legs opened right away! We were all happy, except for Bunny.  We hadn't realized how much her heart had been set on a girl until that moment.  She said she'd been asking Jesus for a girl.  I told her that God always answers her prayers but sometimes the answer is "No," because he has something better in mind than our ideas.  She didn't like that idea.  Anyway, that was before we found out.  When we went to the imaging place, the tech told us right away it was a boy.  She knew Bunny's preferences and she phrased it this way: "Well...she's not right!" so I said,
"Bunny! It's a boy!" and her face fell and she looked down quietly for a moment before saying,
"Well, I'm not going to play with him." We reminded her that her best friend is a boy and they have lots of fun playing together and she responded that she doesn't like to play with him. 
"Well, are you still going to love him?" I asked. 
"Yeah, I'll still love him," she said grudgingly.  Then she hid behind her Daddy's chair and cried for awhile.  Later, she popped her head out, still mulling over the sad situation and said,
"I'm NOT gonna love him!"  When we tried to talk to her about it.  I told her how I decided I wouldn't love her Auntie E if she was born a girl and she was and I loved her very much anyway and she responded, "I don't want to talk about it." 

Well, that only lasted for a couple of hours.  By the time we were ready to go to church that evening she was excited to tell her best friend that she has a little brother too now. In the days that have passed, she has manifested her growing love for him over and over.  She has plans for him when he comes out, she loves helping me pick out little toys and clothes for him, and she laughs when she talks about him and giggles when I tell her how much he's wiggling inside of me.  We knew that the frustration would pass over time.  She responds to things she hasn't planned much in the way I do--denial and anger and then acceptance.  She also has a very nurturing heart, she's eager to love on others--especially babies. 

After the ultrasound appointment, we did some shopping and we stopped at Moe's for dinner.  When we came home we immediately made this video to share the news with our families--most of whom live too far away for a one-on-one visit: http://youtu.be/wgAUu9a_waQ.be
Turns out, it wasn't my most brilliant idea since my parents and Dave's Dad aren't so savy with the technology thing, but it's okay.  We tried our best to make the announcement personal and special without actually being there.  All in all, it was a good effort and everyone was really excited--well, my family at least.  Dave's didn't respond. 

Once we'd given the families a couple of hours to get the message, we put this week's belly picture up on Facebook.  We figured the blue ribbon would get the message across.  After awhile, we put the link to the video as well.  In any case, it was fun spreading the news, though after 5 sisters and a daughter, the idea of carrying and raising a boy is really a foreign concept to me.  The last time I took care of a baby boy (my brother) I was 7. 

Other developments this week:

He gets hiccups a lot.  I should go back and read through my blog posts of Bunny's pregnancy to be sure, but I don't remember feeling the hiccups this early. 

I can feel his little body sometimes if he gets in the right position.  I mean, I can sometimes feel it even if he's laying still.  It's so cute!

I feel baby movement every hour when I'm sitting still.  Sometimes I can even tell which body parts are moving.  His little legs feel like little popsicle sticks. 

I've begun needing to pee more frequently.  I haven't had that yet with him because I've had such a hard time taking in liquid. 

I'm hit with exhaustion daily.   With Bunny, the exhaustion was more the first trimester.  Now, I'm just wiped after my half day teaching, and sometimes as I teach it's all I can do to keep from sitting down and/or putting my head on my desk. 

My legs have been tired and I had a couple of leg and back cramps.  This is in addition to the Varicose veins that are driving me nuts.  They're worse where they started during Bunny's pregnancy--at my ankle--and that's where they actually hurt, but they're popping out already. 

19 weeks

If I could sum up this past week in one word it would be "productive."  Not that I'm more productive than I was before I was pregnant, but I am so much more productive than I have been in the past few months.  Bunny has been watching less television, I've actually gotten to tackle a few tasks besides the regular laundry/dishes/sweeping trio, and I've been making dinners regularly.  Like real dinners that I planned, shopped for, and follow a recipe to make. THAT is progress for me!

My bladder is so weak.  It's so much weaker than it was with Bunny.  I remember losing bladder control with a sneeze or a cough when I was 8 or 9 months pregnant with her, but apparently my Kegels aren't as strong this time around.  I exercise them regularly as I'm supposed to, but they just don't contain the pee the way they used to.  Oh well.  I had a cold this week and as I got to the coughing part, I wore a pad because I couldn't imagine the thought of leaking during school.  Yuck!
The baby is moving so regularly! I just fall in love with every wiggle and kick.  Bunny felt him or her move this past Sunday for the first time, and Dave felt the baby on Wednesday.  The fact that both of them are feeling movement at a point so early that many women don't even feel movement makes me feel better about always feeling fetal movement so early.  That, and I talked to other women who are feeling their babies for the first time at about 10-12 weeks, far before the magical "16 week mark" that doctors say you will feel movement for the first time. 

My varicose veins are ridiculous.  For not really having any with my first pregnancy, I'm completely off guard to have them so quickly.  They started in the spider veins I got on my ankle with Bunny and are quickly spreading throughout my calves--especially my right one.  I wear knee high support hose and that helps, but without them on, my ankle really hurts.  My mom says that her varicose veins stay with her even years after pregnancy.  That's discouraging since I hate wearing pantyhose even in the coldest months and I don't really want to be strapped with them the rest of my life.

The nausea is still here, but it's small.  Some days are better than others and the thing that manages it best is food.  The more paleo my diet, the better I feel, though that's not always the case.  I have been allowing more grains in--gluten free grains--and I seem to be able to stomach them fine, but I definitely feel a bit better without them.  Also, my first week eating rice and corn flour coincided with a cold--the first sickness I've ever gotten pregnant.  I mean, supposedly your immune system is worse when you're pregnant, but not mine.  Mine is like steel during gestation, so I don't think it's a coincidence that going to grains (which unfortunately are really bad for you despite what the culture says--they bring down your immune system and make your gut really unhealthy for the good bacteria--a shame since I LOVE me some warm bread!) allowed me to get sick.